The memory faded, washed away by the rhythm of the tide. I looked down at the man beside me, his eyes closed, breathing steady against my skin.
Nameless. Wordless.
Once I pulled my cargos back up, my right hand drifted to my pocket, fingertips brushing the metal pin I kept there. It was Dad's firefighter badge.
I carried it everywhere. Deep down, I thought maybe if I kept it close, the hole he left wouldn't swallow the rest of me whole.
I never said that out loud. Not to Marcus. Not to my younger brothers, Matthew and Miles. Not even to myself.
I wasn't about to start at this moment either, with a stranger's head tucked against my shoulder and the surf dragging slowly against the sand.
I exhaled, slow and hollow. The trip was supposed to be an escape. Isolation. Quiet.
Instead, on the first fucking day, I found him.
And I didn't even know his name.
The light from the sun was almost gone, but I couldn't stop looking at him. The soft glow of tiki torches from the distant resort cast long shadows across the sand. He lay beside me with one arm flung overhead, the other curled loosely near his heart.
There was a tiny mole just below his left collarbone. I also spotted a faint crescent scar near his hipbone, almost hidden by sand and sweat. He had one freckle at the corner of his mouth, like punctuation.
He was beautiful in a way I didn't have words for.
Not polished. Not perfect. Just… undone.
There was something in his stillness that didn't feel like peace. It was like what remained after a fire burned out. It was the kind of quiet that followed screaming.
And I knew that silence. I'd been living in it.
He hadn't told me anything. Not why he was here, or who he was, or what he wanted.
He didn't need to. I already knew so much.
I knew his fingers gripped my arms to stay grounded. I knew he kissed me hard, and I knew that he had that spark of hunger in him—the one I'd thought was dead in me until tonight.
Maybe that was why I couldn't look away. Touching him, I didn't feel like I was circling the drain for the first time in months.
I'd attached myself to a stranger.
He moved. Just barely.
His thigh slid down to rest against mine, skin to skin. His arm brushed across my chest and stayed there.
Not possessive or hesitant. Just there.
I didn't breathe for a second. I wasn't used to the afterglow.
Sex, for me, had mostly been about what I could give someone else. Let them take. Let them feel good. Let them call it something easy.
Then, I'd leave. Or, they would.
That made it easy to go right back to being the guy who never said too much. I was the guy who worked too many hours and didn't believe in calling anything intimate.
Somehow, this man was touching me like it meant something. For some reason, I let him do it.
I didn't try to untangle and move away. Instead, I let my hand drift slowly to the small of his back, resting there without pressure. His skin was warm and damp with salt and sweat.
He let out a quiet exhale. We didn't speak. There was nothing to say.
